Video: How we process chickens and fill the freezer!

Home video demonstrates raising and processing chickens from start to finish for meat. Starting with day old chicks, using chicken “tractors/stagecoaches”, mixing their own chicken ration and sharing their unique processing methods.

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Just found your site…..Really loving it and find it inspirational. I love your cheese cave. My question is about broilers. I live on Vancouver Island in Canada and the norm for farmers to grow is Cornish cross? You know the ones that grown to 8 pounds in 8 weeks.This is my third year doing them, although they grow well….The mortality and lack of “chicken behaviour” is low. I would like to try the red broilers that you are using. Beau Peep farms in Chilliwack supplies a freedom ranger to Western Canada. I am also considering ordering the red broiler from McMurray hatchery. Do you have any knowledge of their birds? Have you used them? Next question….Are you raising your broilers, from day old chicks on sprouted grains? Do you have any suggestions? Thank you for your info. We have dairy goats and when they all freshen this summer I intend to try some cheesemaking. 🙂

Hey Nicole,
Here’s my thoughts… I really dislike raising any chicken that grows to so fast that at 8 to 16 weeks it’s so plump and eating so much food you need to process it. Genetically all those chickens have a real hard time reproducing… I’ve tried! Mostly, they are too fat and there fertility is verrry low. The roosters are to big and damage the hens and they can’t balance well because of there size and bad genetics! I don’t like any conventional called broilers… freedom rangers, red rangers, cornish X, red broiler… have have real distaste for all of them. Our goal is to raise healthy animals that are of better quality than we can get at the store or farm… and animals that are healthy and can REPRODUCE! We’re still on the hunt for a chicken that makes a decent meat contribution … right now we’re trying the “Dorking” variety… they take 6-8 months to grow out and are a old heritage breed back from the Roman times… we’ll see, they’re going to be a much smaller bird than traditional broilers… to make up for the meat issue in slow growing chickens… we switched our poultry consumption to turkey…. WE LOVE HERITAGE TURKEYS! They give MORE meat that chicken broilers… and it’s healthier meat… because they are healthier birds… wait until you process one and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Also, they eat a fraction of the grain that you’d feed to a broiler. They can really do just fine on barely any grain at all. They are wonderful foragers! You’ll go broke feeding broiler chickens. Here’s a blog post I did on the subject… http://thepromiselandfarm.org/heritage-tom-turkey-tommy/ I need to revise it, but the basic ideas are there 🙂 Yes we use sprouted grain to start chicks… we just give them the same sprouts as we give the bigger birds… they won’t eat the grain that’s too big for them (like sunflower, wheat, oat etc.). You’ll need to have some sort of vitamin addition if you’re just doing sprouted grain… make sure to get those B-Vitamins or you’ll get chicks that have bad legs and many won’t be able to walk. We blend up liver and milk and put it in one of those little 1 gallon waterer… they gulp it up… it’s almost like they know they need it. If you don’t want to do milk and liver… you can use a vitamin powder supplement… or also have a free choice chick starter crumble (look for one with out antibiotics… organic is best).

Great video and wonderful website however, in your processing video those are not kidneys…they are testicles. :~/
The kidneys are located inside the back, in deep pockets near the spine which you can take your fingers and scramble…not useable. God Bless!